


Unsweet Dreams

by thesoloists



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Assault, Bucky Barnes Has Nightmares, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Language, Murder, Psychological Trauma, Strangulation, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25256326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesoloists/pseuds/thesoloists
Summary: Bucky may be free of Hydra’s influence, but he’s not free of that of the Winter Soldier.He’s slowly coming to terms with that.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	Unsweet Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for hurting my poor bb like this, but I swear I needed the bit of catharsis at the end.

Bucky used to live in constant fear. It was like a malignant tumor, slowly killing him and robbing him of the ability to live every damn day of his life.

To be in a crowd was like sticking him in a coffin full of nails. As he struggled to stay out of the swirl of hurried people, his anxiety would skyrocket to the point of short-circuiting his mental system. His whole body becomes stiff, his responses shortened and robotic, as he becomes helplessly overwhelmed by the blaring warning signs going off in his head. Until his brain, finding no other option, shut down enough to function on autopilot. Only when he was away from everyone, when his mind was sure they were a safe distance from the danger of the Winter Soldier, would he come back to himself. But, to be honest, was there ever a safe enough distance from such a mindless beast?

The idea of becoming _him_ again was so crippling that before Shuri offered to fix him, Bucky would spend days at a time locked in his room and weeks without leaving the compound. Shuri said he would never be that man again, the crudely molded vague interpretation of one, anyway—not after whatever indescribable thing she had done to him with Wakandan technology that Bucky still finds respectfully confusing. Bucky wanted so badly to believe her, but why, even now, if she is as certain as she was then that the gangrenous part of him is gone, _why_ does he still see him in his dreams at night? Sometimes standing before him like a ghost, void of his humanity, empty of soul, filled only with commands of murder and mission and the pain endured in every attempt to scrape away the bloodshed. 

There’s no place in Bucky’s mind he can hide where the monstrous Winter Soldier cannot find him. In pleasant dreams of sandy beaches with the smell of salt on the open air, the beast will tear open a gaping black rift right behind him, grab Bucky by the back of his collar, and drag him into the void as his screams fall on apathetic ears. Where he ends up is a place where his cries are heard by no one, where color cannot penetrate the bitter black, and where shapes and barriers do not exist. He can run forever and never hit a wall, and all the while, the Winter Soldier will stalk toward him. Inevitable, just as Bucky is with his surrender.

Agony awaits him, but he knows it will end. It has to end. And when it does, he will wake.

Bucky has long given up trying to escape on his own. Every attempt has proved futile, and it only draws out the agony. He prefers his death to be as quick as ripping a band aid. So, he goes nowhere, just stands in the very place the Winter Soldier dropped him, and waits.

The Winter Soldier stands maybe twenty feet away. His eyes are shrouded in smears of dark black, but his eyes are a stark contrast of light blue shards of cryogenic ice.

Knowing the end will be the same as every other end before it brings Bucky no semblance of comfort. He is helpless to it. No more than a prisoner to his own imagined fate.

After a while of the Winter Soldier reducing the encounter to nothing more than a one-sided staring contest, Bucky hangs his head, shaking it at the absurdity of being made to wait. “Just get it over with,” he mutters.

The shape of the Winter Soldier flickers and disappears, manifesting with daunting intensity right in front of him. Bucky finds nothing but the hoard of his own past screams in the Soldier’s empty gaze. 

In a blink, the Winter Soldier moves. The plates on the Soldier’s metallic machine arm whir and shift as his cold metal hand latches around Bucky’s throat in an unyielding vise, squeezing tighter and tighter, killing the human, killing _Bucky_. 

Then it is over. In that particular dream, after Bucky dies, Bucky wakes.

Most of the time, however, it is Bucky looking through the lens of the Winter Soldier as a captive, unable to control his movements. It is Bucky’s traitorous metal arm around the throat of someone he cares about, tightening around their choked gasps and rasped pleas...

_[Bucky has no desire to live out the Winter Soldier’s greatest hits on all of his friends, so he asks that the burden be left to another’s imagination. If it is any consolation, he is very sorry.]_

He’s killed them all more times than he can count. Steve always knows when he’s had one of the dreams the next morning and who it was about because Bucky is incapable of looking that person in the eye. The image of his hand wrapped around their throat is still too fresh a wound in his mind. He’s nothing more than a shell on those mornings. His eyes are gaunt, his attention impossible to keep, and he’s left haunted for most if not all the remaining hours of the day. It’s an inevitability.

It wasn’t until he met you that Bucky allowed himself to believe Shuri’s words of comfort weren’t just empty words meant to reassure him. It’s taken months for him to get to this point, but you have been nothing but patient, never forcing him into anything, never questioning the slow speed at which your relationship progressed. You only take what he gives and in return give what he needs. He still has nightmares, though they occur far less often with you sleeping beside him. In fact, before tonight, Bucky hadn’t had one in months. To know what it felt like to be well-rested, he hadn’t felt that probably since...since he was digging his stupid five-foot-nothing best friend out of trouble. Before either had turned their gaze toward joining the war. 

When Bucky has either nightmare involving the Winter Soldier, it doesn't matter which, he always wakes up crying. Sometimes silently, sometimes with whimpers or explosive sobs—freshly rebuilt only to be destroyed by the horrors that play out in a hell of his mind’s own making. You sleep notoriously light, so it doesn’t take much for you to wake, and you never want him to apologize for it. His whimpers begin quietly, but they are enough. With the fast action of someone who has done this many times before, you move across the bed until your chest is flush with his back, throw your arm around him, and hold on tight as you whisper sweet assurances into the crook of his neck as his body is wrecked by sob after sob after sob. Grounding him in the existence of his humanity, in the reality of his life as it is now—good and warm and safe _—_ until his tremoring body stills. It’s by no means a quick remedy, and perhaps the emotional exhaustion does most of the work, but with one final shudder, Bucky lets out a hard breath, his last few tears nothing more than wet stains on his pillow. 

In unspoken words of comfort, you press kisses along the jagged scaring where flesh meets metal, before resting the side of your face against his shoulder which is damp with cool sweat, and guide his ragged breathing to a slower, fuller calm with the warmth of your breaths on his back. 

In the now quiet dark of the bedroom, Bucky strokes the back of your hand, tracing lightly over every knuckle with his fingertips. 

With tender movement, you turn your hand beneath his to grasp his hand loosely between your fingers. Your gentle squeeze is simply to ask, _Are you okay?_

He squeezes twice. _No._

He shifts his hand again and after a beat, makes a small request by tapping three times on the back of your hand. Your voice breaks through the darkness as you whisper to him, “Who was it, my love?” 

It takes him a minute because he has to remember, and that involves reliving the memory of the dream, if only for a glimpse. But he wants to remember, if only for an attempted catharsis. 

“ _Steve_ ,” he says hoarsely. Or Natasha, Sam, Tony, or someone else unfortunate enough to have been dropped into the role of victim—But it’s Steve who affects him the most, sometimes in aftershocks that last for days. 

Three taps means he wants to talk about it, but doesn’t want to speak first. Something about having to break the silence after having to relive that trauma just feels too daunting to him, especially now that he’s just been reminded of the monster hiding in his closet after months of silence gave him the false security of maybe being finally free. If anything, it was the sobering realization that he would never truly be free, but it’s an affliction of which he’s willing to find ways to cope. So far, his best success has been found in months of therapy and in the love he found with you. He doesn’t solely rely on you. That’s a burden, and he’s not about to expect you, an extraordinary ordinary human, to somehow be the cure for his chronic mental disturbance. But you bring him words of encouragement and a presence that puts him at ease, and if this is merely the baby-steps to learning to walk on his own, he’s willing to take it and continue practicing. No matter how much he falls, you have made it clear you will always be there to catch him if he needs it.

You wait until he’s ready for you to get up, spending several minutes brushing strands of damp hair away from his face and the rest of the uncounted time trailing your fingers up and down his arms and across his chest in an endlessly light, thoughtful caress. Only when he tells you it’s okay do you briefly disappear into the kitchen to put a kettle on the stove. It’s always been difficult for him to go back to sleep after a dream like this, but it’s easier after he talks through it, and it’s easier with tea.

He doesn’t find sleep again, but you fall asleep on the couch an hour before dawn and halfway through his fourth episode of _M*A*S*H._ Your whole body is curled in a tight ball on the other half of the couch as you hug an empty mug of tea close to your chest. He carefully removes it from your grasp one vise-like finger at a time (jeez, you have an insane grip for someone who’s asleep), vaguely feeling like he’s trying to disassemble a bomb, and sets it on the side table next to the couch _._

As the credits roll, Bucky carries you back to bed and is part way through tucking you beneath the covers, all warm and snug like a cute little sausage roll, when you begin to stir. Instantly, Bucky freezes. Then he remembers you always do this as if it’s part of some weird post-nightmare bedtime ritual and always manage to go right back to sleep. Comforted by the assurance, and also a little amused by the memories, he turns to close the blinds to block out the rays that would have cut unbearably bright lines against your face had he done nothing (and he’s never been much of a _do nothing_ kind of guy), but when he turns back around, you’re rubbing your eyes with your fingertips— _awake,_ it seems. (Aw, hell _._ ) You blink blearily at him with a lopsided smile he finds adorable, a smile there just for him. 

Sometimes he forgets how lucky he is. 

When your mouth opens with an obscenely loud, drawn-out yawn, he's never loved you more.

After smacking your lips, still in the midst of a sleepy haze, you ask, “You okay?”

While you look at him, Bucky realizes you’re trying monumentally hard to keep your eyes from opening fully, narrowing them to the point that he wouldn’t even know you were still awake if you hadn’t said something. Bucky’s smile turns butter soft at that.

His heart swells. He’s just so appreciative of you. Your kindness. That you willingly sacrifice precious hours of sleep just to tend to the wounds of his own psychological warfare.

“Yeah. I’m good now,” Bucky assures you, and he means it. He lowers his hand to cradle your cheek, sweeping the pad of his thumb back and forth across the swell of your cheek beneath your eyelashes. At the caressing motion, your eyelids flutter, then fall completely closed in total surrender. He leans down, pressing a lingering kiss to your temple. “Sweet dreams, doll.”

Your response is swallowed by the pillow as you shimmy down the bed to bury your face beneath the covers, but he’s pretty sure he heard you say something endearing.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [Tumblr](https://plumrise.tumblr.com)!


End file.
